0000000000793630
AUTHOR
Shelly M. Griffin
Ba/Ca ratios in shells of Arctica islandica —Potential environmental proxy and crossdating tool
Abstract Ba/Ca shell time-series of marine bivalves typically show flat background levels which are interrupted by erratic sharp peaks. Evidence from the literature indicates that background Ba/Ca shell ratios broadly reflect salinity conditions. However, the causes for the Ba/Ca shell peaks are still controversial and widely debated although many researchers link these changes to primary productivity, freshwater input or spawning events. The most striking feature is that the Ba/Ca shell peaks are highly synchronous in contemporaneous specimens from the same population. For the first time, we studied Ba/Ca shell in mature and ontogenetically old (up to 251 year-old) specimens of the long-li…
Reproducibility of trace element time-series (Na/Ca, Mg/Ca, Mn/Ca, Sr/Ca, and Ba/Ca) within and between specimens of the bivalve Arctica islandica – A LA-ICP-MS line scan study
Abstract Trace element time-series in bivalve mollusk shells and other (biogenic) materials can potentially serve as environmental proxies. Yet, the applicability of element-to-calcium ratios is often challenging, because non-environmental factors such as vital effects distort or mask environmental signals. If a trace element time-series is driven by an environmental factor, it should be reproducible within and between coeval specimens of the same species. In the present study, we tested whether time-series of trace element-to-calcium ratios can be reproduced within and between coeval specimens of the bivalve Arctica islandica and thus whether an external signal is encoded in the temporal v…